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Deploying Office 2013 with MDT 2012 - Silent Installation

Question

I'm playing around with MDT 2012 and trying to deploy Office 2013 without any user interaction (silent install)

I have added the source files to the Applications folder under my Deployment Share and then edited the Config.xml file under Applications>Office 2013>Properties>Office Products tab and then "Edit Config.xml"

Answers

I currently are using the following to install:
setup.exe /config config.xml /adminfile custom.msp

This is my installation, i have used setup.exe /admin to create my msp file.
I would say what are you are doing there is okay, but you haven't specified any productkey (you might see something in the eventviewer :)).

If you do the following, you actually don't need to do anything but start your setup.exe

1: Create an msp file, which you place inside the "\\server\share\Office15\updates"
folde
2: Create your config.xml file, which you call config.xml - and place this file in the \\server\share\office15

The setup is configured to automaticly look in the install folder for a config.xml file, if it is there, it is used.
All msp's inside "updates" folder is also automaticly applied.

All replies

I currently are using the following to install:
setup.exe /config config.xml /adminfile custom.msp

This is my installation, i have used setup.exe /admin to create my msp file.
I would say what are you are doing there is okay, but you haven't specified any productkey (you might see something in the eventviewer :)).

If you do the following, you actually don't need to do anything but start your setup.exe

1: Create an msp file, which you place inside the "\\server\share\Office15\updates"
folde
2: Create your config.xml file, which you call config.xml - and place this file in the \\server\share\office15

The setup is configured to automaticly look in the install folder for a config.xml file, if it is there, it is used.
All msp's inside "updates" folder is also automaticly applied.

I have been told this morning by my colleague that there is no need for me to mess around with the config.xml file and that I should be using OCT to create a custom .msp file and then place that in to the Updates folder just like you mention.

So it seems that I have been creating more work for myself going via this route but I thought it would work but just couldn't get the parameters right.

So you mentioned that I should place the config.xml file in this location \\server\share\Office15\updatesbut the thing is my setup files are not store in a share and exist on the C:\drive\User\Desktop\Office 2013. Also I assume that once I have added all the source files for the application to the Deployment share, I would then need to make the changes
in D:\DeploymentShare\Application\Office 2013 in order for it to work?

Or maybe I should make all the necessary changes to the config.xml file before adding to MDT?

I will go home tonight and download the Office 2013 Admin Tools which contains the UPDATES folder and then create a custom .msp file and try it that way, if it works then I can just forget about the config.xml file until I become more familiar with MDT 2012
and App Deployment in general.

I would change everything and make it function prior to adding it to MDT. :)

The placement of config.xml is NOT in the updates folder, but instead in the same folder as the setup.exe (as stated, if it's placed alongside with the setup.exe, the setup.exe will use it by default).

The placement of your .msp is in the .\updates folder.

You don't need the office 2013 admin tools to create all of this. :)

When you do a "setup.exe /admin" you activate the OCT, where you can create your msp file.

You have been a great help and I can't wait to get home and play with this.

PS: I assume it would be possible to simply place the office 2013 sources files on a share and then simply use CMD on the target machine with the above commands you mentioned to test to see if office 2013 installs silently rather than having to
deploy Windows over and over again?

Pressing F12 to PXE boot and install Windows 8 takes about 20 minutes before the Office 2013 install kicks in and then if it doesn't work I then have to make changes and re-deploy all over again, so installing Office 2013 from a shared network to a target
machine would be so much quicker to test.

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